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Dark Days: Christina’s Vegetable Soup

I think this winter I’ll just write a generic “Hey, it’s snowing, and I’m eating soup!” post and put it up once a week. Still, it is snowing, and I am eating soup: specifically, my friend Christina’s garden vegetable soup, that I made back in October with some of the last CSA vegetables of the season. This is my favorite fast food meal; locavore fast food, wherein it takes 5 minutes to re-heat a bowl of homemade soup, made when farm-fresh vegetables were abundant, and just waiting for me in the freezer until a snowy February lunchtime. Served with a slice of locally made Wave Hill bread, it totally hit the spot. And now, it’s back to work: the only drawback to working from home is that you don’t get snow days!

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3 comments

I know this goes against the vegetarian aspects of this dish… but have you tried using leftover whey in your soups? I love the rich depth a little whey adds to a chicken stock based soup. I get the goats milk for my chev from a little local farm every month or so… but still always find myself with endless bags of frozen whey cubes in the deep freezer.

I haven’t tried whey in soup (although this soup is made with chicken stock so is not vegetarian at any rate), but I’m not a big fan of milky/creamy soups in general, so that is probably why. I have used whey successfully in breads: yeast bread, scones, pancakes, it works nicely as a milk replacement in a lot of those recipes. Nevertheless, I usually end up throwing the vast majority of it away; I save the last 2 – 4 cups of it (the most milky run-off from the cheese) to use in recipes and throw out the rest. I’ve tried making whey ricotta, but the yield is so small as to be not worth the bother. What I really need are some pigs!